Give the Man a Break

And by "the Man" I mean Nicholas Sparks.

Earlier this week my social media feeds blew up with "news" of novelist Nicholas Sparks's marriage split. I saw a lot of callous remarks being made about the irony of it with Sparks's penchant for hopeless romanticism in his books, and it seemed the trend was to chastise him, many people almost reveling in his pain. And then there were those who claimed that love couldn't ever last if Sparks couldn't make it work. Honestly, I was ashamed to even be reading such commentary.

That said, I'll keep this short and sweet.

Leave the man alone. Just because he writes about enduring love doesn't mean he isn't human. It doesn't mean he has some magical power to make love last that the rest of us don't. He had a twenty-five-year marriage, which is more than most people can say.

So, to Nick Sparks, wherever you are, I'm sorry for what you're going through. It's a sad thing for a relationship to unravel and it's painful and scarring and it takes time to heal, even when you're a bestselling author.